She came out in a few minutes, dressed and looking as smooth as ever. She had put on fresh make-up, and the ugly redness was gone from the side of her face. She touched it gently.
“I want to thank you again,” she said. “I don’t know how much more of it I could have taken.”
I stood up. “Then you do know where he is?”
She nodded quietly.
I began to understand then what she had been trying to make up her mind about. But I still didn’t see why. What did they want with me? We went out. She locked the door and we walked out to the car.
She got behind the wheel, but made no move to turn on the ignition. She slipped around facing me, with her elbow on the back of the seat. It was very quiet, and her face was deadly serious. She had made up her mind.
I gave her a cigarette and lit it, and lit one for myself. I dropped the lighter back in my pocket.
“There’s one thing,” I said. “Maybe I don’t want to know where he is.”
She gave me a quick glance. “You don’t need a lot of explanation, do you?”
“It was just a guess,” I admitted. “But I’m still not sure I want to know anything Tweed Jacket is trying to find out. I don’t like that efficient look of his.”
“You won’t have to know,” she said. “At least, not until we’re ready to go. I’m just offering you a job.”
“Before we go any further,” I said, “what kind of jam is he in? Not the police?”
“No. You’ve seen two of them. They didn’t look like police, did they?”
“Hardly,” I said. “But what does he want with me?”
“He needs help. Specifically, a diver.”
I took a puff on the cigarette and looked out through the moss-hung dimness of the trees. “The world is full of divers. They run into each other nowadays, spearing fish.”
“A diver is not quite all,” she said. “Remember—”
I began to get it then, all the questions about boats and offshore sailing and navigation. He needed several people, actually, but in a thing like this the fewer you told, the better.
“So that’s why the gun business?” I said.
She nodded. “I’ll admit it was rather theatrical, but you understand, don’t you? When I read that story about you in the paper I thought you were just the man we were looking for, but I had to be sure. Not only that you could handle the job, but also just what kind of man you were.
There are a couple of reasons why a mistake could be absolutely fatal. That seemed like a good way to do it. It would give me most of the day to size you up, and in a place where we wouldn’t be seen together. Unfortunately, I was wrong about that. I knew I was being followed, but I thought I’d gotten away from them. However—” She blushed slightly and looked away from me in confusion. “I don’t think there was too much harm done, since he took it for something else—”
I was ill at ease myself. Tweed Jacket hadn’t been the only one.
“What is it you want me to do?” I asked. “Don’t forget, I’m merely an employee of a salvage company. Any job negotiations are supposed to be handled by the owner—” She shook her head emphatically. “No. That’s out. We don’t want a corporation, or a committee, or an expedition. It has to be one man, and one man only, and it has to be one who’ll keep his mouth shut for the rest of his life. If you do it, you’ll have to quit your present job, giving some other reason, of course—”
“It doesn’t involve breaking any laws?”
“No,” she said. “But I’ll warn you. It could be quite dangerous. Even afterward, if they found it out.” She stopped suddenly, frowning a little. “No. Wait. Since you’ve brought up the question, I’ll be perfectly frank with you. There is one aspect of it that probably isn’t quite legal. That is taking a boat into the waters of a foreign country and landing two people secretly. But there’d be no chance of your getting caught, and it doesn’t sound like a particularly reprehensible crime—”
“Depends on what they were being landed for,” I said.
“Simply,” she said, her eyes somber, “so they could live in peace. And go on living.”
I nodded, thinking about it. I had a hunch she was telling it to me straight. She and her husband were running from Tweed Jacket and God knew how many more for some reason, but somehow I couldn’t connect her with anything criminal. Of course, I didn’t know anything about him at all, but I was beginning to like her very much. I tried to warn myself. It hadn’t been twenty minutes since I’d gone off halfcocked in the other direction. Maybe there was just something about her that precluded objective appraisal, at least as far as I was concerned. “What is the deal, specifically?” I asked. She took another drag on the cigarette, and crushed it out very slowly in the ash tray. She looked at me. “Just this,” she said. “That you buy and outfit a seaworthy boat large enough to accommodate three people but which can be handled by one seaman with the help of two landlubbers. We’ll furnish the money, of course, but the whole thing is to be done under your name or an assumed one, and we have no connection with it, for obvious reasons, until the very hour we go aboard. Secretly, and without being followed. That isn’t going to be easy, either. Sail us to a place off the coast of Yucatan and recover something from a private plane which crashed and sank—”
“Wait,” I said. “In how much water? Do you know?”
“Just roughly,” she replied. “About sixty feet, I think.”
I nodded. “That’s easy. The depth, I mean. But finding the plane is something else. You could spend years looking for it, and still never locate it. Planes break up fast, especially in exposed positions and shallow water.”
“I believe we can find it,” she said. “But we’ll go into the reasons for that later. After we recover what my husband wants from the plane, you sail us to a spot on the coast of a Central American country and land us. That’s all.”
“What Central American—” I started to ask, and then stopped. The vagueness had been intentional. “I land you? What about the boat?”
“The boat is yours. Plus five thousand dollars.”
I whistled softly. There was nothing cheap about this deal. Then two thoughts hit me at exactly the same time like two slugs of Scotch. The boat is yours was one of them, and the other was Ballerina. It was like hearing somebody had left you a million.
“Wait,” I said eagerly. “How much do you plan to spend for a boat?”
“Could we get an adequate one for ten thousand?”
“Yes,” I said. I considered swiftly. The last I’d heard they were still asking twelve thousand for Ballerina, but they might go for an offer of ten cash. Sure they would. And if not I’d add the rest myself out of the five thousand.
Then I thought of something else. “You mean, I just land you on the coast of this country, whatever it is, and that’s it? You realize, don’t you, that without papers you’ll be picked up and deported inside a week?”
“That part is all taken care of,” she said.
It was none of my business. She could even say that nicely.
We were both silent for a moment. I turned, and she was watching me. “Well?” she asked. “What do you think?”
Manning of the Ballerina, I thought. I could see the lines of her. But, still, what about this? I didn’t know anything.
“Look,” I asked, “this whatever-it-is in the plane. Does it belong to your husband?”
She nodded. “It’s his.”
“Which is his real name? Wayne or Macaulay?”
“Macaulay,” she said simply. “You don’t make it as easy for them as looking you up in the telephone book.”
“Who is Tweed Jacket?”
“His name is Barclay. You might call him a killer, though I prefer executioner. It describes his attitude as well as his profession.”